Greg Bovino Brings His Little Man ICE Show To Charlotte
And it's already ugly.
With only two days of warning to local authorities, Commander Op At Large CA Gregory Kent Bovino planted his size six boots (allegedly!) on the ground in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday. Just in time for Thanksgiving, he is bringing his brand of terror to anyone who looks like an immigrant there, indefinitely!
He arrived after 56 days in Chicago, where he earned a restraining order for the Border Patrol after lying in a deposition multiple times, and overseeing fed thugs shooting pepper balls and tear gas at journalists, priests and toddlers, with no warning. And now 600 of Chicago’s ICE detainees are being released because a judge found they did a bunch of illegal, warrantless arrests.
Heck of job, Bovey!
So, another blue city with a Black mayor! As it also happens, the sheriffs of five large counties in the state — Charlotte’s Mecklenburg, Wake, Durham, Forsyth and Buncombe — are Black Democrats who ran and won election on platforms that included not collaborating with ICE. The power-grabbing Republican legislature has been trying to pass a bill to force local law enforcement to cooperate anyway, but Democratic Governor Josh Stein vetoed it. So now Bovino is here to ride to those good ol’ boys’ rescue and get revenge on Charlotte for not honoring ICE’s demands.
Charlotte is very diverse, and more than 150,000 of its 950,000-ish residents are foreign-born. But the more rural parts of the state are deep red, and a whole lot of yeehaws are surely cheering this spectacle of human misery on with great happiness. Promises kept!
Day one, here’s Border Patrol smashing the car window of Willy Aceituno, a US citizen who has a Real ID, and who says Border Patrol already stopped him twice, and he told them this. And then they stopped him a third time and busted his window and slammed him to the ground anyway.
And watch these creeps walk onto on a woman’s property, masked in an unmarked minivan, and start asking questions of two landscapers decorating a Christmas tree, until the homeowner ran them off.
RANDY, THEY’RE IN OUR YARD!
GIT THE HELL OUTTA MY YARD!
Good for you, Rheba Hamilton!
Do those agents have their body cameras on? Do they have identification numbers visible? Doesn’t look like it.
And along with the usual Home Deport parking lots, the masked goons of ICE also snatched away people in church parking lots. Only some Christians are Trump’s cherished ones, you see.
Ever the little tiny showman, on X, Bovino posted pictures of detainees sitting in the backs of cars, claiming they were dangerous criminals, yet with no names to prove who they are, as ICE has been doing all along. And Bovino squawked his pride at snatching 81 people who’d been minding their business off to somewhere.
“We had a record day today!!!!! Massive numbers in Charlotte. Some good criminals also.”
Some criminals?! BUT BUT GREG, I thought you said they were ALL criminals!
Where these people are now, no one is sure; ICE has no dedicated facility in North Carolina. Maybe a local jail, maybe Georgia. Are these detainees being entered into the database in a timely kind of way like a federal judge in Chicago just ordered the Broadview facility to do, so their families can at least figure that out when they get wherever they are going? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Meanwhile local businesses serving immigrants have closed indefinitely out of fear, and hundreds of residents have come out to protest.
And bold tarheels have been following agents and screaming at them, and getting guns pointed in their faces for exercising that right.
It is Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC and Portland all over again, in other words. Untrained, unchecked agents going batshit, and people disappearing into vans, one big accident or not-really-an-accident waiting to happen. No tear gas, pepper balls or flash bangs at protesters yet, though, so, that is maybe a sign Bovino and Kristi Noem decided to tell their minions to try and follow court orders this time around? (Ha ha!)
This should not be America! And yet it is.
Well, good luck, Charlotte. Tweet those whistles! And record, record, record everything. There will surely be lawsuits. And hopefully someday consequences.
[Charlotte Observer archive link / Bolts Mag / CNN]
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So last Saturday I had front row seats for a an epic first date fail at the bar. Dude shows up slurring drunk and tries to order a Miller Light (we do not and will never carry Miller). His date stared at him icily until he left. He claimed to work in “border security” but wasn’t too specific. Pretty sure he was an ICE man turned out into the cold.
Randy, pick up the pace, get out there and back Rheba up.